In the summer of 1996, 16-year-old Regina Spektor received an arts scholarship via the Nesiya Institute, allowing her to travel to Israel as part of a five-week student trip. As she and her fellow travelers hiked in the desert, Regina would make up little songs and melodies to fill the time.

"They were really supportive. They would say, 'you have a really good voice, you should do something with that'. After a whole bunch of kids had said this to me, I thought, 'holy shit, maybe this is what I should be doing'. They said, 'you should play an instrument,' and I said, 'but I do play an instrument!'"¹

“I noticed that some kids would always try to hike next to me and ask me to sing particular songs that I had made up,” she recalls. “So I started trying to remember them. By the end of the trip, all these kids were telling me that I had to write songs!¹ Shortly thereafter, Regina began formal songwriting, with her first known work being “School Is Out”, written in 1996.²

In the middle of her junior year, Regina transferred from a yeshiva to the secular Fair Lawn High School for the remainder of the 1997 academic year.³ During this time, Regina continued to hone her songwriting abilities, creating more songs, such as “Piromania” which was penned in 1997.² The next year, she tried out for the school rock band The Boptones by singing an a capella version of Fiona Apple’s “Criminal”.⁴ She would later perform “Criminal” and three other covers with The Boptones as part of band’s end of year concert.⁵

As Regina continued to write, she began recording rough demos to submit to the U.S. Copyright Office. “I used to make these silly cassette tapes full of songs and send them to Copyright Office because that’s what someone told me to do”, notes Regina.²

² denotes information that was confirmed via personal email correspondance with Regina Spektor.